Business must do more to limit exposure of data in the cloud

Organisations should pay closer attention to security concerns associated with storing data in the cloud as configuration errors together with cloud threats pose a significant and ever-increasing risk to enterprise data, says Nompumelelo Mdima, McAfee Business Development Manager at Axiz Advanced Technologies.

“While cloud services offer business the advantages of scalability, business continuity, collaboration efficiency and flexibility of work practices, it is equally important to appreciate that data in the cloud is more exposed than many organisations realise,” notes Mdima.

According the most recent Cloud Adoption and Risk Report released by McAfee, nearly a quarter of the data in the cloud can be categorised as sensitive, putting an organisation at risk if it is stolen or leaked. The report also revealed that the sharing of sensitive data with an open, publicly accessible link, increased by 23 percent year-on-year. In addition, the average enterprise experiences more than 2,200 misconfiguration incidents per month in their infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) instances.

Mdima says the data highlights the need for business to deploy cloud security solutions that span the entire cloud spectrum as cloud service providers only cover the security of the cloud itself, not customer data or customer use of their infrastructure and platforms. “It is imperative that business adopt a cloud strategy that includes data loss protection, configuration audits, and collaboration controls to properly protect their data. Not doing so also has consequences through noncompliance with internal and external regulations.”

Organisations need to first understand which cloud services are in use, which data is sensitive, and how it being stored and used as a first step to mitigating risk. “Armed with a clear and coherent overview, suitable security policies can be put in place to prohibit sensitive data from being stored in unapproved cloud services and guard against noncompliant sharing of data via email or through a publicly accessible link,” says Mdima.

The McAfee report, which analysed billions of events in anonymised cloud use, also found that most threats to data in the cloud result from compromised accounts and insider threats. “A sound security policy should also have protocols for identifying irregular behavior, for instance when a user accesses the cloud from separate locations simultaneously, so that a comprised account can be dealt with immediately,” adds Mdima.

“In order accelerate their business, organisations should look to cloud-native and frictionless ways to defend against security threats. Proactively addressing security responsibilities before there’s an incident remains the best way mitigate risk and safeguard what is very often a company’s most valuable asset – its data.”